An attempt at tearing the seams of language and culture to tailor a fairer fit.

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Image: Skinny or deformed?

Skinny or deformed… that’s the question we need to ask ourselves when presented by what seem to be ridiculous standards. In today’s world, “deformed” is correct, in as much as Photoshopping and other techniques have taken actual human males and females and turned them into overly perfect fakes. Humans have lines, wrinkles, freckles, sagging flesh, fat, weird bone protrusions, and cellulite.

I post this to remind ourselves that even though it’s Photoshop that is setting the standard today, its been the fashion industry that has been doing this for a LONG time. Anyone who delves deeply into corsets, how they were worn, and how they were continuously tightened over long periods of time to ensure that those who wore them would have a narrow waist, full hips, and full chest, also know that corsets rearranged a person’s guts and caused women to faint from an inability to fully breath.

So, skinny or deformed? If you don’t think this blushing bride is deformed, then you got issues.

(Note: even though I disagree with a culture pushing corsets on women to the point where they are permanently changed, I highly recommend anyone who just likes period clothing, which I do, to visit http://realhistoricalpatterns.tumblr.com/ where I got this image. Mostly because the creator is undermining the very system that seeks us to feel bad about ourselves, an industry invested in selling clothing or patterns for-profit. Of course, I look at these things and think “it’s going to take a real professional tailor to put these things together based on what is here, but that’s beside the point. My mom could do it, even if I couldn’t.)